Less Harassed

I thinkthat the establishment here in this country is getting less paranoid. I am less harassed now, or was yesterday a lie low time for them? I carried a small placard which had the caption: SA ILALIM NG M. LAW, ANG TAUMBAYAN WALANG SARILING PAG-IISIP AT WALANG OPINYON. Many women passengers on board the MRT were reading it but their faces were bland, no reaction. Are the Filipino people immune, callous, desensitized to activism already? The extent of harassment and government reaction to critical thinking has taken a toll on the people's political standpoint.

Or is it the media? Have the media not allowed the people to voice out their grievances, so much so that the people are always waiting for them now to take up the issues and speak for them? There should always be space for assessing how powerful media could be in terms of speaking about issues but not always speaking for the people?

Or is it possible that the people are mesmerized by the kind of officials we have -- who all come from the elite, affluent and speaking English all the time?

Amid all these, on the other side of the globe, the American people are in preparation to decide who will lead them next January 2009 up.

It must be very exciting for them. But I wonder, how honest their elections would be. One US official was asked here how elections had been after bush was declared winner. and he said, "We Americans learn from your elections," and he was talking about the counting in Florida.

Really now!

---Yesterday, I went to Makati to get my loyalty reward phone from Globe and to get my celfone fixed. The guy there said that it would be sent to my son's place. When I told him that I had talked already to the Globe in Quezon Ave, and they told me that I could just come today, 21st of Septmber and get the unit. He viewed his computer and then said that all I have to do is call up the hotline, 7301000.

Bureaucrat!

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I finished my Supreme Court Memofor Reconsideration, detailing my stint at the Inquirer from 89 to 91, why I should have been regularized for working as a regular columnist weekly for almost three years earning a pittance of 300 pesos per article.

In it, I delved into historical and theoretical issues about communication. How a big newspaper like the Inquirer could take advantage of idealistic writers (hint, like me) and pay me a patsy amount just because it could hire writers, make them submit articles and pretend that no employer-employee exists.